Arthur Marshall

Lincoln is an odd place, very insular and I can imagine that there will be a considerable flouting of the guidelines. I lived there for many years and was extremely pleased to leave... I do think that a considerable number of people of various age groups are now comfortable with ignoring advice/rules/laws about Covid protection and we just have to put up with it, I'm afraid. There has been such inconsistency and official misinformation, coupled with the fact that everyone knows someone on FaceBook who heard THE TRUTH from an expert somewhere, that everyone is now making up their own minds as to what is safe and how to behave. This is fine for those of us who, like me, are fairly asocial anyway (and have a house full of musical instruments and books as well as the boat) but extremely hard on those who aren't and whose lives are constrained by it. So I sympathise with LadyG but i don't think anything much is going to change for a considerable while. As for the flu vaccine, it still seems to be available if you pay for it (about thirteen quid) but a lot of pharmacies are rationing the free jabs to those with health conditions - another example of a wild government promise that took no account of fact. There's supposed to be another big delivery sometime next week. And if it matters, I had no side effects at all from mine.

Just got this: Due to water levels on the summit of the Macclesfield Canal and the upper Peak Forest Canal. Marple and Bosley Lock flights will be closed for 48hours, From 3pm today (Saturday 26 September) so the water levels can be recharged. an update will be provided on Monday.

Thanks for all that. I was making a wrong assumption about the thermostat. I'll hoick the thing out and clean it out. Your suggestion about the air inlet hole reminds me that Bizzard said something similar a while back & I'd either forgotten or not really understood. The flame pattern looks ok, but bigger than I remember it being and noisy, and a couple of times I've had it on 3 the CO alarm has gone off, which it never has at any other time. That's why I was a bit worried about it! The spiral is ok, the tube's clear. There's no external vent. I've been putting off a major clean as I have to dismantle part of the kitchen to get at the back of it, but the time has come...

Running an Electrolux 3 way fridge on gas, I'm getting too much air into the burner if I turn the fridge up to 3. Works fine on 1 and 2, but in hot weather it needs turning up and it's trying to make too hot a flame. Is there an adjustment to the control knob that will turn it down a bit? I presume that's where the problem lies as it seems to be a smooth increase as you turn the control up rather than three specific settings. I can't find a schematic for the thing anywhere.

That's what they told me last year - all on seasonal contracts. With an agency. But I've known some of them for many years, and will miss them. And still no explanation for the need to book.

Seems to be an update of the eCanal maps, which have stopped working on a lot of phones. They say that they'll honour any previous purchases, so it presumably will load the updated maps. I look forward to finding out...

The Quakers are notorious pragmatists - remember the quote from one confronted with a burglar: "Friend, I mean thee no harm, but thou art standing where I am about to shoot." I'm sure Josiah squared it with his conscience OK! It's also hard to see how anyone could have avoided some form of contact with the products of the trade. You could well argue that the situation in the mills and factories wasn't a lot better than slavery in some ways, though of course there's still a fundamental difference. I always found it interesting that while slavery, in order to work, reduced people to property, recently departments once referred to as "personnel" got renamed as "human resources" - once again reducing humanity to the status of things like chairs and filing cabinets.

I am slightly paranoid as I've had a lot of trouble with diesel leaks into the SR2 engine oil. It's been fine for a couple of years since I replaced the leak off rail but the level showing on the stick is up a bit again, by about a quarter inch. Could this just be a result of the boat trim changing? - since I last looked I've near emptied the water at the bow and put a load of diesel in the tank at the back so the boat's at a noticeably different angle. I do have my suspicions about the quality of the replacement rail - the first on the guy put on fell to bits as he fitted it.

It's not "cancel" culture - it's just that some people have finally realised that it's daft (and possibly wrong or, at least, stupid) to consider that footballers, rock singers, dead politicians or slave traders should be held up as role models, or remembered for anything other than their actual achievements. Which in some cases were great, in most cases, like most of us ordinary folk, a mixture, and in some cases, totally reprehensible.

I suspect this happened a few years ago about the time they stopped getting paid for their lunch breaks, and were forced to stop tunnel traffic for that half hour, which actually meant a lot longer as no-one could be in the tunnel at that time either, and their lunch time was specified so they couldn't be flexible as they had been in the past. They were seasonal employees, presumably on a new contract each time, so they probably just assumed...

I don't think we need worry. Unless there was a slave trader called Mr Caldon or Sir Trentandmersey we are unlikely to be targeted. After all, no-one has stopped going to cheap car washes because they are usually staffed by trafficked folk, have they?

No doubt this why we now have to book for the tunnel, as there's going to be some very cross people if the volunteers don't turn up. There's already been one occasion when the fan didn't get turned on, and if you have volunteers manning the tug? The whole rationale for booking being due to Covid is obvious nonsense. Hey ho.

Pedestrians have already been killed by cyclists on pavements. Hasn't resulted in any enforcement... Who's going to do it anyway? Especially now the police are being told their main job is to count up to six and tell the time...

Bollington today, guy walking on towpath, cyclist belts up behind him, shouts "excuse me". Old walking guy is either deaf (like me) or has had enough, keeps walking in the centre of the path. There's no room to overtake, cyclist hasn't got a bell, so a hundred yards later as they go round the corner out of sight, old deaf chap is still trudging slowly along with the cyclist behind him. Of course pedal boy could have got off the bike and politely pushed it past him, but obviously never thought of it. Made me laugh, anyway.

I still find it weird that anyone can comfortably leave a multi thousand pound investment, full of desirable stuff, totally insecure and unattended for weeks at a time on the towpath. It reaffirms my faith in human nature that hardly any get vandalised, broken into or stolen.

How odd. Nor have I...

Has anyone ever done a marketing survey (which is what this is) that they are going to use in advertising without agreeing in advance with the surveyors what the results will be? And probably writing the triumphant press release? Luckily, now we have social media, we have lots of people who believe everything they read on it.

RCR seem to be trialling a new version of the android canal map for free, saying it's now one download for the entire system. Didn't work for me, and seems only free till the year end, but might interest some of us. It's the beta version, apparently. IOS out in the new year. Looks like they're dumping support for all the old eCanal maps, which is annoying, but I suppose that's progress, in the sense that you're supposed to bin what works fine and buy something new but not as good. Old Nicholsons are better, anyway...

Why would you want it in your own garden?

On the Macc this morning, dog craps on the towpath, owner dutifully picks it up, bags it. Puts bag tidily on lock landing bollard next to where I'm waiting to go up Bosley. "Dog bin at the next lock", I say. "There's one just back there" he says, walking off. "I'll pick it up on my way back. I'm not walking around carrying that about". The bin at the previous lock is about ten yards from where he's left it. And before you ask, by the time the conversation was done I was in the middle of the cut going in the lock, so I'm afraid i left it there, as did the boat following me.

Can't see how a surveyor could spot this as he'd have no idea of the original tank size, or how the bowthruster impinged on it. Surveyors are very keen to stress they don't look deeply into stuff, some for example won't take pictures off a wall to chevk for damp. If they can't see it, it aint there. Mostly, they're a waste of time and money.

Farm moorings are fairly secure, especially if people are living on their boats there. But there's no real security on a boat, they're easy to break into though it's still a rare occurrence. On farms, I've been broken into twice in thirty years, both times by a tramp (prob not the same one!)looking for somewhere to sleep and doing very little damage and no theft, though there was booze and money on the boat. He did eat a pot noodle though, pooor sod, so he must have been desperate. And I had a genny nicked many years ago. A friend of mine had his engine stolen though!

Thanks Tony. By the by, your advice has been invaluable over the years - I've still got printouts of some of your training sheets from years back!